Crisis Management Teams: Issues in the Management of Operational Crises

This paper seeks to explore the concept of teams within the process of emergency or crisis management, with a view to assessing the importance of personality-related issues in determining team effectiveness. Organisations use ‘teams’ as a means of organising work. The logic of their use relates to the supposed ability of groups to make ‘better’ decisions than individuals. Of particular importance here will be the decision-making processes that take place within the context of emergency situations. The demands of crisis events—typified by the speed of onset of the event, by the intense confusion that accompanies it and by the resources needed to manage it—create problems for effective decision-making within organisations. The design of crisis management teams needs to take these environmental factors into account, in order to ensure that organisations can continue to function effectively under such conditions of intense threat.